Monday, March 6th, 2006

Don't Come Down Here

According to the band’s website, all three Canadian dates on Serena Maneesh’s North American tour have been cancelled. They were due to be at Lee’s Palace on March 30, but it doesn’t appear that that’s happening anymore? A case of our crack(-smoking) immigration folks persecuting the Norwegians again? This affects me very little since a) I wasn’t going to be able to make it anyway and b) they’re everywhere at SxSW (I count four shows at least), so I’ll have no excuse not to catch them there. But for Canadians with a jones for Scandanavian psych-glam-shoegaze, here’s hoping they get whatever the problem is sorted out sooner or later.

But in better news, they’ve been picked up by the new label in the Beggars family, Playlouderecordings, and their self-titled sophomore album will get a release in North American on May 23. Originally released last year in Europe the record has gotten some rave reviews and ranked a respectable 29 on Pitchfork’s best of 2005 list. Whether this works for or against them is entirely up to you. What I’ve heard of them so far is definitely catching my ear. Give them a listen on MySpace and in addition to the MP3 below, Buddyhead has one on offer as well.

MP3: Serena Maneesh – “Un-Deux”

Another album scheduled to come out May 23 on a Beggars-affilitated label, this time 4AD, is the new full-length from Mojave 3. Originally supposed to be out tomorrow, Puzzles Of You was delayed by a couple months for various reasons but they are hoping to meet the new release date and maybe even have a video and single precede it.

Dirty On Purpose – whom you’ll all be coming out to see at Lee’s Palace tonight, right? – have added a couple of tracks from their forthcoming album Hallelujah Sirens to their MySpace page. “Light Pollution” is classic DoP but “No Radio” pleasantly suprises – horns!

Howling Bells’ self-titled debut album will be out on May 1 in the UK. No domestic release is in the cards as far as I can tell, so be prepared to pay import prices and for it to be worth it.

XpressMag says hi to Jens Lekman. Jens has confirmed his appearance at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, so hopefully that means some touring while he’s on the continent… and he’ll pop north of the border to visit his friends in The Hidden Cameras… and they’ll play some shows…

Nellie McKay and Eartha Kitt, together at last, courtesy of Harp.

Jenny Lewis interviews, new and old – Sign On San Diego has the new, Incendiary has the old, dating back to last Fall. Oh, and did you see the new contest I’ve got running? Free tickets! Enter enter enter.

Neil Gaiman discusses the now-commonplace trend of comics being turned into films for The Guardian. It’s true – there was a time when anything comic-related becoming a film, be it small-screen or big, was a rare event, which is how I ended up watching Trial Of The Incredible Hulk as a TV movie some 17 years ago (featuring Gimli as the Kingpin!). Now I have the luxury of being able to separate the good adaptations (Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men) from bad (Daredevil, Elektra, Punisher – both of them) and the world is a better place for it. But I admit that I still get tempted to see the dreck… old habits die hard. And ike Gaiman, I am cautiously optimistic about V For Vendetta, which opens March 17.

And whilst talking about movies… Crash? Best picture? Seriously?

np – Centro-Matic / Fort Recovery

By : Frank Yang at 9:08 am
Category: Uncategorized
RSS Feed for this postNo Responses.
  1. Torr says:

    FYI:

    Howling Bells "Wishing Stone" single went in at #12 on the UK indie-label singles chart this weekend.

  2. punky! says:

    Down with Crash. I watched yesterday and didn’t get the hype. It was like being pounded in the face with a sledgehammer.

  3. Idiotjed says:

    Saw Dirty On Purpose last nite here in Montreal and only one one comes to mind … damn.

    Just that wall of sound alone coming from those two guitars, chills I tell ya. I’m psyched for the album coming out in May.

    Aberdeen City, the other band on the bill even better. If they were on a major label and had a big management team behind them they could be Radiohead big. That good.

  4. Mike says:

    All your enthusiasm for Dirty on Purpose plus some of the audio samples I’ve heard recently makes me WANT to go check out their show tonight, but having been out to Canadian Music Week shows three nights in a row(Thursday to Saturday of last week), I think I’m all concert-ed out. Next time for sure. My March concert calendar is already busy as it is. By the way, who’s China Jean? Couldn’t find any info on the ‘net about ’em.

  5. Lt. Dan says:

    Crash: I agree. Good movie, but best of the year? Meh. Any one of the documentaries (and probably a half dozen that weren’t nominated) were better.

  6. Sean says:

    That’s a shame about Serena Maneesh not playing in Canaduh. I really love that record and was very excited about seeing them play live. Maybe I’ll have to travel to the USA now…